Life after death: by what authority?

Isaiah 25:6-9, Revelation 7:9-12; John 5:24-29

From groans to grace

Romans 1:17; 8:22-23; Eph 2:

We have an amazing Lord

Mark 16:4-8; 2 Corinthians 4:1-7; Isaiah 40:6-11

A Follow-up Study of the Graduating Classes of 1959, 1960, 1961, and 1962 from Belview High School, Belview, Minnesota

One of the primary means of evaluating the effectiveness of an organization or function is to contact the people who have been served. With this thought, a follow-up study of the graduates from Belview High School was undertaken during the 1962-1963 school year. The main intent of this study was the evaluation of the curriculum by the students whom it had served. Of additional interest was the graduates’ concepts of needed services and additional subject areas conceived from deficiencies encountered in post-high school undertaking. Answers to specific questions were sought. When did graduates marry and how many children did they have? Is graduate’s spouse from immediate Belview area? Where were graduates living? How many graduates continued their education and what schools did they attend? What reasons did graduates have for choice of further education? What type of degrees were graduates seeking? How much time elapsed between graduating and obtaining the first job? What were the most important factors which influenced graduates in getting jobs? How did occupational choice in high school compare with occupational choice at the time questionnaire was filled out? How did graduates view courses taken in high school? What type of curriculum improvements did graduates feel were essential

Human Thanatomicrobiome Succession and Time Since Death

The thanatomicrobiome (thanatos, Greek for death) is a relatively new term and is the study of the microbes colonizing the internal organs and orifices after death. Recent scientific breakthroughs in an initial study of the thanatomicrobiome have revealed that a majority of the microbes within the human body are the obligate anaerobes, Clostridium spp., in the internal postmortem microbial communities. We hypothesized that time-dependent changes in the thanatomicrobiome within internal organs can estimate the time of death as a human body decays. Here we report a cross-sectional study of the sampling of 27 human corpses from criminal cases with postmortem intervals between 3.5–240 hours. The impetus for examining microbial communities in different internal organs is to address the paucity of empirical data on thanatomicrobiomic succession caused by the limited access to these organs prior to death and a dearth of knowledge regarding the movement of microbes within remains. Our sequencing results of 16S rRNA gene amplicons of 27 postmortem samples from cadavers demonstrated statistically significant time-, organ-, and sex-dependent changes. These results suggest that comprehensive knowledge of the number and abundance of each organ’s signature microorganisms could be useful to forensic microbiologists as a new source of data for estimating postmortem interval

Examining Factors Associated with the Use of Face Coverings during COVID-19: A Survey of Shoppers in Greater Grand Forks, Minnesota and North Dakota

Despite the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, the pandemic’s persistence and recent spikes in cases have heightened the need for the promotion of protective behaviors notably, the continued use of face coverings (or ‘masks’ in the common parlance for COVID-related face coverings). Effective messaging on mask use is essential to more fully resonate with individuals and their shared communities. Studies covering rural or mostly-urban regions in the U.S. are sparse. Accordingly, an interdisciplinary team of social work and public health researchers explored mask wearing behaviors in a small, urban metro community consisting of two cities spanning North Dakota and Minnesota that serves a mostly rural region. Chi-square tests for independence revealed nuanced gender and age-based differences in face covering usage. Significant factors in mask usage included satisfaction with available information and related public education efforts, and approval from people perceived to be important. Findings suggest the value of utilizing parasocial interactions to promote protective behaviors such as face covering use. This paper discusses additional implications

Reciprocity as a foundation of financial economics

This paper argues that the subsistence of the fundamental theorem of contemporary financial mathematics is the ethical concept ‘reciprocity’. The argument is based on identifying an equivalence between the contemporary, and ostensibly ‘value neutral’, Fundamental Theory of Asset Pricing with theories of mathematical probability that emerged in the seventeenth century in the context of the ethical assessment of commercial contracts in a framework of Aristotelian ethics. This observation, the main claim of the paper, is justified on the basis of results from the Ultimatum Game and is analysed within a framework of Pragmatic philosophy. The analysis leads to the explanatory hypothesis that markets are centres of communicative action with reciprocity as a rule of discourse. The purpose of the paper is to reorientate financial economics to emphasise the objectives of cooperation and social cohesion and to this end, we offer specific policy advice